


Raw

by PaganWriterAllThaWay01



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Mutual Pining, Post-The Final Problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-23 13:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13788288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaganWriterAllThaWay01/pseuds/PaganWriterAllThaWay01
Summary: After the events Sherlock has been through since knowing of his sister, he is raw. His heart has been stripped from his chest and vivisected. He is indeed so raw that his mind is now allowed to reflect on some of the things he never allowed himself to dwell upon.





	1. A Sad Man Reflects About The Love Of His Life

Love.

Sounds weird.

L-O-V-E

Four letters.

Just four.

Why is it that that word –just that simple four letters– is so fearable?

Why is it that I have feared it for  most of my life? 

Why does it hurt so much? Is this what I am supposed to feel?

Is it normal to feel this empty?

Fuck's sake, why did it have to happen to me?

Is it love what's crashing me now? Or is it the knowledge that I have lost it?

She doesn't look at me anymore, there's no more warmth for me in her eyes, not one single corner of brightness there.

Her eyes weren't like that before, I'm sure. Have I done that to her? 

She doesn't want to work with me, she always sends some other pathologist who will end up storming out because I'm such a git. 

I'm a git.

I remember that at the beginning I didn't care about her. I deduced her as I would anyone else and saw that if I pressed the right keys she would be useful.

I used her every time I decided it was fit to do it. I didn't care how much I was hurting mousy little Molly Hooper. I didn't realize, that much at least, that I was hurting her, but had I known, I wouldn't have cared. She was nothing to me.

One time I saw a trail of tears down her cheeks. That's when the guilt started. I could imagine the quiet echo of her sobs in my head, as if I had heard her myself. It would always get louder and louder every time I used her, every time I got her hopes up just to crush them the next second. I started to see it in her eyes, I was hurting her.

But, back then, it was just in that moment, it would never bother me the second I got myself out of her presence.

But life is cruel, isn't she? Molly was always so kind to me. And she, damn her, slowly but surely started making me care about her. Using her feelings to get what I wanted started paining me as well, I felt guilty that she was so abominably good to me when all I did was pick her apart.

It hurted to know I was the one who was breaking her heart.

One night, I didn't have a case to distract me, I was lying awake in my bed and I started thinking about her. She always smiled, but it always was such a sad smile...

Her hurted eyes haunted me.

For some reason her feelings for me never died, it didn't matter how much of a git I was to her, she still felt the same for me. And I relised that I liked it.

It felt good to know that she couldn't stop herself from feeling something good towards me. It felt solid like nothing in my life did. It warmed me.

That's when I noticed that sentiment had found it's way into my mind.

I was scared, _I was so very scared_. I had worked all my life to avoid sentiment, but there it was. My worst nightmare come true.

And I was such a coward that I decided not act upon it. I tried to scare her off, I didn't want to get attached to her anymore than I already had. It didn't work.

And some part of me (the one I tried to shun, the one its voice was getting louder with every beat of my heart) was so unbelievably happy about it.

It felt so good.

I wasn't the only one trying to stop feeling, she was trying to forget me. But she couldn't. And I was so pleased that she couldn't. She tried to date someone else, and then it started to hurt me too.

I am well aqcuainted with that burning sensation in my chest. I could see every detail, every success, everthing that went wrong, every boyfriend who was not the right for her. Nothing was right about it, I didn't want to admit it, I didn't allow myself to think of it, but deep down I was scared that some day she would make it. 

I couldn't stand it. I just couldn't. It felt wrong, _so very wrong_ , I couldn't stand that she was kissing another lips and being touched by other hands. 

I knew it wasn't fair, I was never going to act upon my feelings, she deserved to forget me and move on with her life. I knew it, but I couldn't accept it, because in the most hidden part of me I felt that she was mine.

 Mine... 

One time after the other, everytime she tried to date I deduced her boyfriend and ruined it for her. I was so jealous. I still am. 

I shall never forget that night, that damned Christmas night. She had dated someone at the time and I was so jealous when I saw that damned red present. I remember the twitch of desire that shaked me then when I saw her dress, I remember the rage. She's succeding, I thought,  she will forget me.

I remember the burning coldness that enveloped me when I deduced her. She was going to see someone else that very night and she looked so beautiful. But she wasn't dressed up for me, she had put that much effort on emphasisimg her prettyness for someone else.

Not mine anymore.

I was blind with jelousness, I felt betrayed, I didn't have the right to, but I still felt it. I felt hurted, and it was the hurt that talked when in turn I hurted her.

But in the end I hummillated her for nothing. It was me all along and I was unable  to notice. It hadn't occurred to me that all that I read in her present could be directed to me. My judgment was clouded by jelousness –all that I had ever feared–  and all I got in turn was the clear sight of her watering eyes fighting the urge to cry.

I couldn't stand it.

I never apologize, never since I'm a child have I apologized for anything and meant it, but that time I did.

Then the case gave me an excuse to ran away, I was so ashamed that I took it. But it wasn't enough, after The Woman's 'death' she was forced to do the autopsy, and  she just had to misunderstand the nature of my relation with Adler. 

Becausethat's just my luck.

Then it came.

Moriarty owed me a fall, didn't he? I fell. Hard.

And still she was there for me, she helped me fake my own death and I went to chase down the rest of Moriarty's web. It's funny how he never saw her. He put a gun for everyone of my loved ones but her. How could he not see? I haven't yet understood, if he was my equal in intelligence, how could he miss my feelings for her? A bullet for everyone that mattered, but none for the one who mattered the most.

Some nights, when I was certain I needn't sleep with an open eye but would still have to sleep outside, in the cold; I would lock myself up in my mind palace and convince myself that John was there to endure this with me, to share my burden, that Molly's warm eyes were there for me, like a hot welcoming tea cup, that Mrs Hudson would be there, offering her motherly and soothing presence to me.

I would open my eyes expecting to see them. And I would immediately close them again, bitterly disappointed to understand that they were never really there.

How I missed them! 

There was some point there in which I just had had too much.

Molly was there, everywhere, I could not get her out of my head and I realised that if I ever came back I would act. 

BecauseI needed her in my life again. 

John was there too, I missed thinking out loud with him by my side and I missed his acid sense of humour.

I missed my life.

Sometimes I would look at the sky and just let myself imagine that she was somewhere there, waiting for me, with her big warm brown eyes and a trembling smile just for me. I daydreamed that if and when I came back she would throw her arms around my neck and everything would be right in the world again.

I kept going, I kept trying and every criminal I took down from Moriarty's web was a step closer to that fantasy.

Sometimes I just rushed  in order to be done for the day faster so that I could go to my temporary accommodation and daydream in peace.

Life must have so much fun with me, doesn't she? Because when I came back, I recovered John. But when I came to Molly I had already lost her. She hadn't waited for me, why would she? A kiss on the cheek was my  farewell to my childish illusions.

It hurted. It hurted like I had never imagined it would hurt.

It was almost comical, how her fiancé was physically identical to me, I remember concluding that she hadn't moved on that much.  He was an idiot, but I didn't have the right to ruin it for her.

I wanted to find something, whatever, just to stop it, but he was a good man, he loved her, he didn't have anything for me to use it against him. Why would she find herself an idiot? What would she talk with him about? The newest piece of gossip about this celebrity or the other? The weather? Wouldn't she bore hersekf to sleep with him?

I'm a bit ashamed that I was so relieved that it didn't last once she understood Tim's lack of brains. But then again, when I more or less had a chance again, I couldn't take it, because I had a case and it would be too dangerous for her to be involved with me romantically. Moriarty had missed her importance, but Magnussen wouldn't commit the same mistake if it became that obvious. 

I remember very well the impact of her hand against my cheek. She was furious when at the beggining of that case I started using again. When that case was over I truly believed that I was never going to see her again. I had misused the time, hadn't I? I could have had her, but I chose not to and I was going to die without knowing the taste of her lips because I had been a stubborn idiot and banned myself from enjoying at least a bit of my time with her.

 I knew something was off when Moriarty "came back to life". I knew it was a fake, but I was so utterly relieved, I still had a chance. I could still win her. Turns out that chance never came.

 Mary died to save me and in consecuence I almost lost John too. He was angry and grieving his wife and couldn't manage a rational thought. I couldn't even see my goddaughter. 

Molly was  distant too.

I was alone. Nobody I cared for would care,  I couldn't cope with anything because my world was falling appart and nothing seemed to work to put it back on trails. So I figured I might as well numb the pakn.

I almost died while pulling John out of his depression, which worked perfectly well to get Molly as angry at me as she was capable of. I couldn't even think of getting near to her without getting slapped to death.

If I hadn't been such a coward then, maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't have lost her.

But then came along Eurous and her bloody I Love You coffin. That's definetly when I lost her. When Molly decided she had had enough of Sherlock Holmes in her life. I was forced to tell her that I loved her in the worst of ways and situations. Course she didn't believe one word. 

But I did.

I understood then that I loved her, I didn't just feel strongly towards her, I didn't fancy her. I loved her. And I heard her heart tearing apart while telling me that she loved me too. I couldn't take it, I broke her heart, I broke mine and I broke that bloody coffin because I had to take that emotion on something. It was an explosion of something so big and so destructive that I couldn't confine it within myself.

And here I am. 

LostLbut found, hurted and trying to heal, mad but sane.

What can I do? 

Is there a way? Something? I need her.

Love.

L-O-V-E

Four letters.

Two syllables.

Is it my salvation or is it my damnation?

Is this hell? Can I turn it into heaven? 

I don't know.

Love.

Molly.

Love, I miss you.

I miss Molly so much.

I want her eyes to look at me with that fondness she always showed me. I want her to be dreamy around me. I want her kindness. I want her back.

Please, please, please. I don't know who I am pleading to, but still… 

Don'tI deserve a chance?

No, I know I don't. But I still want it. I still love her, I know ~~I want to believe~~ she must still feel something.

Please, please, please, please, let her still feel something for me.


	2. Gloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly reflects while doing paperwork about the evening of the phone call.

Git.

He is the most complete and utter git.

Maybe, if I keep repeating it to myself –If I do it hard enough– I will really start to hate him.

Is it necessary to have no mercy at all with me? Do I deserve it? Was I Stalin in my past life? Is this my payment for all those people who I sent to the Gulags?

Whomever administrates Karma Office please take note: I am not Stalin anymore, I am very sorry for the people who went into the Gulags, for the cities I left to starve to death, the soldiers I sent to their deaths, etc. Still, please do note that this Molly Hooper is another incarnation and did not sent anyone after Trotsky nor any oppositor, in fact this Molly Hooper's only crime is faking a death and it was for a good cause.  
  
The D day as I like to call it, was going to be my wedding day. I had wanted to pretend that that was not true, that everything was alright and I wasn't miserable for the wedding that would never take place that day.  
  
Then Sherlock called, and I –stupid I– Answered the call.

"Good one Molls, you are such a bright one." I say to the pen, because of course Mr Pen listens to me. God, I am the mad pen woman. Well, at least I can cross that from my bucket list, right?  
  
If only I hadn't answered that call! It was the cherry on top of my misery cake. He just had to force me to say it. He must have taken such a deliberate pleasure in forcing me to put in words the feeling that has turned my life upside down, he just had to turn me inside out. Why? Pss, why not.

Why don't just take the metaphorical knife of my feelings and spiral it through my guts? He must have known what that would do to me. He had to know it before pulling the knife with guts and all out of me and then proceed to rip my heart with his bare hands. He is Sherlock Holmes, he would know if I went a different way from home to Barts, he would know what that would do to me.

He came the next day to explain himself but I didn't open the door, I didn't open the door to him, nor to John, nor to Mycroft and when the black limousines came into view under my kitchen window I exited the home by the backdoor.

I had been trying to strip my feelings for him from my chest, not to lay them bare for him to laugh at.

I feel as though I no longer have a heart to tear to pieces, but it's ghost is still there, yearning and crying and not forgetting him.

The logical procedure is to avoid him. To keep him so out of my life that eventually I will be able to move on. I did it once, I'll do it again.

It's just that I can't. Because he is still there, lurking in the darkest corners of my mind. And I hate it, because I can't hate him, I can hate me for being too weak but I can't stop my heart from beating for him. I can hate myself for my lack of dignity, but I can't force myself to hate him.

It's been a while since the D Day and still, I can't breath into the morgue without remembering all that we have passed through, all the things he hadn't cared for when he decided it was time to brake my heart in record speed.

Why would it matter to him anything that I have ever done for him? I faked his fucking death! I could have lost my job! I could have gone to prison! But it was obviously a meaningless gesture for him, like supplying him with body parts for his experiments or making his coffee at the lab.

I saved his life! I saved John's and Mrs Hudson's and Lestrade's lives! But that was by no means a reason to be considerate with me. No matter how uncommon and unforgettable it was for me! Why would that matter to him, why would he care to remember that I have saved his life. He probably already deleted that from his mind.  
  
How could someone like him, a hero worthy of any detective/adventure novel, remember that people like me were the ones to help him in his way to the end of the novel?

Heroes never truly remember about those little helpers, they remember their romantic interests (as if it were they who pushed them till the end and not a combination of little but important helpers, their own means and luck). Heroes remember their helpers when they need another favour, or in their last moments for just a second and to make the reader cringe at the drama, or when the helper dies because for the hero's sake and they feel guilty and miserable for about a chapter and a half.

In the intimacy of my own thoughts I used to dream that I was a character worth being part of the hero-team. But I no longer can, because I'm not, because the hero team is higher than I'll ever will, and not a member of it will understand or care about it.

I remember the night, years ago, when DI Lestrade presented him to me. He deduced I was competent enough and we put hands to work on the current case. Then, when we were walking out of the hospital, a nurse (Mildred) flirted with him and tried to give him her phone, but he deduced her as meanly as he could and that was it. For him at least.

For me, it was the beginning.

I had been waiting for something like that to happen to Mildred since primary school. She had been my school mate since forever but she had never really matured and would call me mousy or morbid Molly till she died (or I did). I remember how she used to leave her foot on my way so that clumsy little me would trip over it, I remember how she cut my hair in class when I was not looking, I remember the gossips she invented about me. She had deserved it.

It might be cruel to wish on her what I don't wish for anyone else (almost, there's always Cammy McGregor, she’s got a good place on my hate list, just above spiders) but he entered my good graces like that.

That first night I noticed he was brilliant but I hadn't yet realised what an amazing brain lied underneath those black curls.

Before I knew it I was in love.

I regretted it almost instantly, I knew he would be difficult. But back then, difficult didn't mean gay, aromatic or inhuman.

Maybe I deserve it for liking him in the first place because he hurt someone. Maybe that's the reason why Karma has turned his razor sharp tongue against me so many times.

It really doesn't matter, because I have just finished my paperwork and I'm rushing out of my office, my turn has ended and I need to get out if I want to keep avoiding the bastard.

Rushing is a manner of thinking, of course, because I'm an adult and I don't run in hospital corridors, though I may or may not have tripped over two or three patients.

In my defence, at least I'm not like that with my patients, mostly because they are on their way to the grave but...

"Stop it Molly, you know it's a bad one." I scold myself, because apparently, talking to my pen is not enough, I have to talk to myself out loud, so that people can know I am mad.

I'm climbing down the stairs when a black Belstaff catches my eye. As soon as he sees me, he changes his way to try and talk to me, but I run.

I can't stand it.

"Molly, please!"

"Go to hell!" I answer. I don't know from where I got the strength to say that. But I do it, and I feel a rush of satisfaction because, yes, I do have some self respect. I deserve better than what I have been treated and I won't take it any longer. I will show him. I can be strong.

Unfortunately I have never been a runner and he is used to hunt down criminals. Could I dodge him? My answer came with a cold hand grabbing mine between five and ten seconds later.

"Please, Molly, let me tell you, it's not–"

"I don't want to listen to it! No more, Sherlock! No more!" And with that I free my hand from his and walk away. He’s still there, petrified, right where I left him.

That's what he deserves, I say to myself. I won't be his secondary/helper character. If he can't bother to remember to respect me the way a person who saved your life deserves to be respected then I'm not going to save him anymore.

But while I decide that I'm doing the right thing, the hot tears that had filled my eyes since he tried to talk to me streak down my cheeks. My slumbered heart beats agonizingly.

If I have done the right thing, why do I feel so hollow? Why is this victory so empty? I don't feel like I recovered my dignity, I don't feel better for leaving him with desperation shouting from his eyes. Instead, I feel like I have committed one of the greatest mistakes of my life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi hi again, second chapter of my edited version of this fic, I really do hope you like it and that you leave comments. 
> 
> Also, I am looking for a beta-reader and would thank a lot to anyone who would like to help me beta this fic (and another one in which I’m still working on and has not been published anywhere yet), thank you!


	3. Melancolique

Molly ran, and in her race against my voice, she left me behind. This time, I don’t go after her. I stay there, paralyzed on the sidewalk.

Does she hate me now too?

I’m the world's only consulting detective. I have solved the most difficult cases of the era. I can tell anyone's life story in seconds, mechanically. I read people like an open book.

But this. This I cannot.

I guess this is what I have feared. This is the very reason why I have avoided sentiment all my life, but I can’t avoid it anymore.

I want to. God I want to. But I can’t lock her away anymore. No matter how many times I close the door for her in my mind palace. She makes me set her free, she picks up the lock, she dismantles the door. She’s there, all-consuming, taking over everything and I can’t fight against it. It terrifies me.

But I can’t fight against her anymore. Now she wanders free and what that has awoken is unyielding in nature and I can’t dissipate it.

“At lovers perjuries, they say, Jove laughs.” I used to laugh at lovers too. Once upon a time I laughed at love and heartbreak.

Not being able to deduce people has always been my worst fear. Having my judgement clouded by sentiment always scared me more than the very likely possibility of dying in a dark alley with a bullet in my forehead.

I raised walls of ice and steel to armor my heart and keep my judgement crystal clear.

Molly hadn't been the first woman who tried to carve her way into the steel. But she had been the first to warm her way through the ice, finally managing to be the tear in my armor. She used to be such a little tear... But once broken it was only a matter of time to shatter everything to pieces.

I wasn’t ready when it shattered. I got cut all over by every piece that fell.

Admitting that I’m hurt is difficult. I don’t understand it, I have always neglected my emotions, I don’t know how to read myself. Everything feels wrong but I don’t know how to interpret it, I know how to dull it, but I can’t. It will make Mind Molly sad again.

I have always known that I would end up being an old lonely man. I’ve always been fine with that. People bother me, I never thought I would want anyone to be near me for anything more than to show off. I hadn't actually thought that I would be that bitter, maybe part of me already knew it, but then again a part of me knew I had a sister and never bothered to tell Concious Me. The thing is that it hadn't actually bothered me. Ever.

But now...

Now, the cold, glorious, reasonable palace I have protected with all my might leaves me feeling empty.

Now, when I try to think of my future, I can see the old lonely man I have always known I would be. But I see myself being a bitter old man. I see an old sad bitter man. I see a man full of many regrets eating him alive and weighting on his back. I see a grey shadow placating over me.

I see myself looking at Rosie, all grown up and mature, with nostalgia aching in my chest. I could have had a beautiful smiling daughter like her. In this distant future where John Watson has already passed away, and the only person that bothers to give me some company is Rosie Watson, I see myself wishing I had a daughter to visit me and not only my best friend's. I discovered too late that I do am fond of... Some... children. I imagine her spending hours chatting with me to lighten my loneliness more out of duty to her father than out of anything else.

I see my grave: cold and abandoned. With no children nor grandchildren to care for it. Of course, Rosie would leave flowers at the beginning, but she would start doing it less and less until she forgot about it. No one to miss me. No one to cry for me. I will leave this world as if I hadn't come at all.

And suddenly it _hurts_ very much to know it.

I don’t want to end that way. I really don't. Every time I think of it I have this tearing sensation in my gut, I don’t know what is it, I know it physically hurts, but I don’t know how to catalogue it. I know no amount of pain killers kill it. I have learned to distinguish sadness, but I’m sure it’s not only sadness, there’s something else but I don’t know what.

My case is somewhere out there, waiting to be finished by a soul that no longer cares for doing so. It wasn’t that interesting anyway. I suddenly am too lazy to bother with investigating it. I already know Mr Oldacre is not dead but hiding in his own house, I’ll text the details to Lestrade so that he frees Mr. McFarlane... Soon.

Slowly I start walking again, back to Baker Street, back to my cold, logic world. Everything I have always valued from my life. Only I don't fit in there anymore. I don’t want it anymore. It’s not enough.

Now it’s too cold for me. It’s too deserted for me. It's too quiet. A cold, quiet desert to lose myself in. But I don’t want to. I crave for warmth.

Everything that felt right once, I now find lacking. Everything lacks the warmth that I need so very badly, it lacks the noise I now need, and nothing can replace the voices I need to hear. My palace is barren.

I want to call John, I really should. But I find that I cannot bring myself to do so. I’m sick of being alone, but my fingers lost their strength every time I tried to call John. Why is it? I don’t know.

I do miss John, I haven’t seen him since last month. I miss Rosie too. But I can’t call him. It’s not worth it anyway, he doesn’t need my instability right now.

I don’t even want to call a cabbie, and so I walk. For a hour or so (67 minutes to be precise), looking at nothing in particular, glancing around me and deducing things I see to keep me entertained.

That woman is cheating on her girlfriend. That man is having a crisis. That one is about to be diagnosed with diabetes. Her mother just died. Got promoted. Boring, boring, boooring.

When I got home I went straight to the shower, leaving a trail of clothes on my way, I kept staring at nothing while showering and then again before and after drying myself. It’s ineffective and nonsensical.

Were I actually thinking about something, it wouldn’t bother me, but I'm not thinking, my mind is blank, I’m just lost.

I want to sleep. I step into my bedroom, not bothering with my dressing gown, and I climb into my bed. I say to myself that sleeping will help me. But it has never helped and my eyes refuse to close. My mind decides it’s time to race from sorrow to reproach, from reproach to emptiness, from emptiness to an acute sense of something, something vague and indefinite that I cannot understand but that fills my veins with an at times warm at times cold sensation that does not let me turn myself off. It was so easy mere minutes ago. What had changed?

I don’t know.

_Everything, everything has changed_

It’s Mind Molly talking, but I don’t understand her. What has changed? Why can’t I sleep? Why was it so easy but moments ago to get lost in a sea of nothingness?

I contemplated the roof and felt the dulling ache of boredom itch under my skin. I’m not going to sleep anytime soon. I know it.

I quit my bed and turn on the lamp. For a while I stare at my periodical table, thinking of the use of every element has for my trade. I got bored almost ten minutes after. So I quitted my bedroom and started pacing through the flat.

My violin case is over my chair and my fingers itch for an entirely different reason. I want to play. Soon the instrument is in my hands and, dear god have I missed playing. Why haven’t I been doing it? I hate not knowing but it’s become a patron in my life as of lately. So I ignore my own questions, tune it and start to play.

I’m not really playing anything real, I start with the song I composed during the Adler case and end up doing an odd mixture between Sérénade Melancolique and Carmen Fantasy.

Pleased, as always, by the way my fingers press the strings without the necessity of thinking about it, just letting them be and content with the sound that reaches my ears. I love that there’s always an answer when I play.

For the first time in a very long time, as the –can I call it a song? It’s more like a blending of other songs– song took over my senses, I felt truly warm inside.

My mind drifts off to some better place, not my mind palace. When I play I almost never end up in my mind palace.

This time, I’m transported to a green immense field, with clouds covering the sky and clean air to breathe. I’ve been somewhere like this before.  
Q  
I can feel the wounds that torment me heal, the pain located before my eyes fading... I can almost see her eyes, they are warm and bright, with that smile of hers, just for me.

As my fingers start to increase the speed and the song turns into Concerto No. 1 in D Major by Paganini the illusion gets more powerful. I feel like coming back to life. Revitalised.

"Try again, Sherlock. Will you do that? Will you try again for me?" She says, her voice is soft, sweet. Warm.

"Yes." I will try. Upon my word that I’ll try to tell her again. I’ll explain it all to her. I’ll do whatever it takes to recover her bright brown lovely eyes. I don’t want to be lost anymore.

It makes me feel cold inside.

"I promise I'll try."

"Good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi hi luvlies, how you doing? I really really do hope you like it, beta'd by Naviety so any mistakes are mine and mine alone. We are getting to the end and damn I do love this chspter, I hope you have enjoyed it as well and will leave comments and kudos <3


	4. Pathetic

Sometimes, when I am very very sad I let myself think things which I would otherwise censure.

It’s not that I let myself plan murder in my head (most of the times). It’s more like those pathetic things I can’t let myself think of if I want to be healthy.

But after just seeing him, I feel overwhelmed. Why can’t I just forget about him? Why can’t I get over him? Is there a way for me not to love him? Not to cry like a teenager with a crush?

I want him to tell me he loves me. And in my head I let myself plead for it

_Please, tell me you love me._

I want his heart, but I will never have it.

I used to think that I was fine having his friendship and being his bolt hole. But I’m not.

 

Somewhere deep, I know there was something wrong in my own personalized D Day. He wouldn’t want to explain or apologize or put any effort in trying to talk with me if there wasn’t. It may have been a case or him being high off his bollocks and doing a sick joke on lil’ ol’ me.

The truth is that I want to be angry at him. Because, yes, my D Day hurted me, stripped me of the last layer of protection my dignity had and and then proceeded to burn it, the thing is I could have still heard what he had to say. But I didn’t want to listen. I don’t. Because if I do, I’ll forgive him and everything will come back to normal.

And I don’t want that.

I can’t do that anymore. It’s breaking my heart. I already threw a good man away for him and I don’t want to grow old waiting for him.

As long as he is a factor in my life I’ll never heal.

And I shouldn’t let myself be this pathetic. I shouldn't let myself want his heart to flutter when he sees me, because that will never happen. I shouldn’t wish for what he told me to be something he meant, because I know he didn’t and it's a vicious circle of wishing and hoping and crying.

I hate that I know that if he loved me, even after all this time, even after all the effort I have made to forget him, I swear I know I would surrender. Because I’m that weak.

Sir Isaac Newton whose birthday I celebrate every 25 of December tell me why don’t I have more dignity.

Why do I insist in wanting him to feel the very same aching cry of love that I feel for him? Why can’t I give up? Why do I want to listen to his vain pretty words when I know they are just that?

If what happened today were to happen again, I know I would let him tell me whatever I was strong enough not to let him tell me that fateful evening.

I would let him weight my heart, if only he would let me weight his. I'm so tired of feeling sad, I’m tired of loving him. Why is it so easy for other people to fall out of love? How did my parents did it? I don’t understand. I can’t do it. I go on with my routine, I avoid him at all costs, I try not to think about him, I try to date, and still it’s him I dream of, it's him I think of when I try to picture my date, it’s him I would do anything in my power to help if he needs it

Today, when he ran after me, I so didn't want to leave. I wanted to listen but I couldn’t. I had to protect myself. I had to protect my heart from him. But still if I were to try to run away again my body would stay rooted to the floor, unable to run from him.

I want to run, I want to hide but I want to stay and I want to listen. I want him to feel the same pain he made me feel and at the same time I don’t. I want him to find me.

I wanted him to run after me again. I want tell him off and I want him to run after me despite it.

I'm torn between what's left of my dignity, my pride, and what my heart tells me.

I want to listen to his excuses. I want to believe in his words. I want to open the door and let him in. I want to cry so very badly.

But I cannot.

I'm hurt. Some wounds run deep. Deeper than he might care. Deeper than _I_ might imagine.

I cannot let myself listen to his excuses but I know I will do it sooner or later. I cannot let myself believe one word that falls from his lips but I’m weak. I cannot let myself open my door to him but I will.

I cannot cry because I must be strong, I have cried for him more than what I care to admit and I'm no child, I'm no teenager. I am not allowed to cry anymore.

I won't humiliate myself anymore.

What he wants, is a more competent pathologist. He wants to come back to how we once were, but I can’t do that. 

Our priorr dynamic was painful.

I can’t go back to it, and if his explanations so much as hint that, I'm afraid I will have to ask him, as politely as I am able, to go to hell and don't ever dare shadow my doorstep again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yoo, guys! Next chapter is the last one, and I really really hope you liked this one, so please please comment and let me know what you think because I really need it okay?


	5. Glee

It’s three in the morning, I’m outside Molly’s building. Am I crazy for doing what Mind Molly told me to do? I really hope not.

I wonder if she will open her door to me this time. There's no John and no black limousines from which she would run away. It's just me.

I finally reach her door. I think I'm going to choke. I stare at her door, trying to concentrate on something else.

The door is old. Red oak. Painted into a cherry-looking shade of brown. Used to being slammed. Scratches over the lock. It's second hand. Little less visible scratches at the end of the door going from tiny to not-so-tiny and then again to tiny. Must be her cat. Her cat is old by now, this ones are newer but still small. She has another cat. She's lonely.

I knock. Nothing. I knock again. Nothing. I knock again.

I'm thinking that I'm going to pick the lock, it can't be very challenging, when suddenly one of her eyes is staring at my me through the peephole.

It only last two seconds.

I have half a second to notice the tear that is forming in her eyes, but I can see that it’s not the first one.

"Please, just let me–" _explain, tell you, I need to tell you..._

"No! I don't want to hear it!"

"Molly, be reasonable!" I spat. I'm angry too, but someone has to make the peace and if she's not doing it, then I am.

"I have to be reasonable?!" She laughs histerically. "Well I'm sorry! Not all of us can be reasonable twenty four per seven. Some of us have hearts, you know?"

"Molly that's ridiculous. We all have hearts, without them no blood would be pumped into our organisms and oxygen would never reach our cells and we would die. You of all should know it..."

_Go to hell you pompous arse!_ Mind Molly says, probably Real Molly is thinking something along that lines too.

"Sherlock, just go." She sighes instead, trying to drop the matter tiredly.

"I can't Molly. I gave you as much time as I could. I can't anymore, please let me–"

"I don't want to hear it Sherlock! Put it in that oversized brain of yours. I don't want to listen to you anymore."

"Molly, please open the door."

_Silence._

"Molly, please!"

_Silence._

"Please!"

Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.

"Open the door, Molly!" I holler desperately. I feel as if she will never let me in. And this will be it. And it terrifies me. But I can't let it be it. I need her. I need her bright eyes and her trembling shy smiles. I need her small chat and her quiet but comforting presence in the lab.

Therefore, I cannot and will not stop trying. I have to make her listen. She has to understand that I really love her. She has to. 

"I won't! Please, Sherlock, just go!"

"Don't you understand that I cannot?!" My throat is dry. I would have liked to say the truth then and there, but I know better. "I'll sleep here, at your doorstep, if I need to. But I will not go."

"Of course you can. We have been avoiding each other for three months, surely you can manage just as well for the rest of our lifes."

"Now, that's a lie, Molly." I laugh humorlessly. "You have been avoiding me. I've been trying to be patient. And I don't know about you, well I actually I do; if the tracks of tears on your cheeks, the dark circles under your eyes and you suddenly buying another cat is anything to go by..."

"You are not even seeing me!" Now it’s her turn to spat, I guess. She mustn't have thought very much about it. She knows me. Probably she's just angry and frustrated and wants to say something.

"I don't need to. As I was saying, let's pretend that I don't know how about you, but I haven't been doing so well. I miss you. Been doing it for a while. Yesterday was my deadline. I won't wait anymore, Molly. So open the door, because this is important and when I say it, I think you'd rather I said it without a door between us."  
Silence, yet again is my answer.

Again, I'm thinking that I should just pick up the lock and be done with it. But then I hear her ran out of the door and I know she is going for her keys.

The door opens.

She's wearing khakis and an oversized sweater. All blue and brown.

Her eyes are wet, but she will not cry. She will not let me see her cry. This is how it works. I have hunted her, I have gone after her and now I'm here.

All she sees in me right now is the damage I have caused her, which lately is more or less a lot, and facing me like this, in the place where she is most vulnerable... I can see it's difficult for her. I understand. I'm having problems too.

Still, I would like it better if this logic consequence didn't troubled me.

She doesn't want me here, but she has missed me as terribly as I have missed her.

Endings can be beautiful, or not. She is not used to good endings. She believed that whatever you would call our –Relationship? Friendship? Doesn't matter.– Our uhm interactions? _Still bad, doesn't works_– had reached its end.

She hadn't wanted it to end, but she had to. Or more like she felt it had to. Now she's angry, and sad, and some little part of her is hopeful.

I step inside. She closes the door behind me. There's a wall that hides the rest of the apartment from me. The floor is cherry wood. It actually shines. I can smell the floor wax. She's been cleaning. She doesn't enjoy cleaning very much. She’s doing it to avoid doing something else that bothers her even more.

"Well?" She rushes me. She's anxious.

"I love you." I blurt out. Way too soon. I blame her. It's her fault for looking into my eyes so firmly, dismantling whatever more diplomatic thing I was about to think of in order to tell her gradually that even though the whole call was against my will, I did not lie when she made me say it.

CLAP!

Her hand collides against my cheek. It burns. I can't move, I'm paralysed once again.

"How dare you?! Sherlock, how dare you?!" She's on the edge of crying but she will not. I know she will not. She will hold back until I'm far away, then she will let her shield down. She won’t be vulnerable in front of me. I don’t know why, but it hurts very much to know it.

"Whatever else can you expect me to say?"

"Nothing! I don't want you to tell me anything! I let you in only because you insisted on it so much! But I already regret it! At least be honest, Sherlock. Whatever is it that you want. Don't you think it's enough? Haven't it been enough for you?"

"I'm being honest, Molly.” I spat, but my voice sounds tender instead of annoyed. “I love you. There's nothing more to it than that. I don't want anything else."

"You’re not!" She cries in disbelief, why would she believe me? "And I want you out! Get out!" She's punching my chest, it's a sad kind of punch, as if she didn't have the strength to throw it. She's hysterical and I have to calm her.

She could really cry. I can't let her cry. She will not tolerate crying in front of me anymore. It will truly brake her self esteem. She will pity herself. She will call herself a defenceless useless child. I can't let her cry.

"I will not."

"Get out!" She tries to push me, but she can't. I grab her shoulders in an attempt to calm her.

I look straight into her eyes and suddenly I'm about to forget what I'm trying to tell her. I don't know anymore. Her eyes have the most alluring shade of brown. It's almost golden. They are bright from the tears that she's holding back. She's so close.

_Think, think, think! Think, you bloody idiot!_

"Molly, look at me." She fights me a little more, but soon she's not moving anymore. She will listen.

"I was forced to do that call. Alright? I didn't want to make you cry, I didn't want to break your heart. I didn't–I–... look, that whole afternoon, scratch it, that whole day: was hell. Did you know I have a sister? Because I didn't. Apparently I had deleted her from my brain because she did... horrible things." I don't want to tell her that Euros killed Victor. I really don't. I’m not ready. "She killed my childhood best friend, burned the house... and she was sent away and she ended in this maximum security facility. She took control of it and she started going out. And trying to solve the puzzle we –John, Mycroft and I– ended up there, in Sherrinford, the facility. She decided to play with us. She made us believe she had control of a plane and there was only a little girl awake there and for every puzzle we solved we would get to help the girl. It was sickening, Molly. Sickening." I have to pause, everything is still too fresh. I can't... I just can't. My hands melt away from her shoulders and I can’t look at her no more. "A man killed himself in front of me, because she wanted me to pick either John or Mycroft to kill him or she would killl this man's wife, I couldn't do it. So he killed himself and she killed his wife because I didn't do it her way."

"That's...That's horrible! Sherlock I'm so sorry!" She chokes on the words, but she can't help but say it. She wouldn't have been her if she hadn't said so.

"Then, she gave us three suspects. I had to pick the true criminal out of them. I did it, I wasn't even sure if he was the actual killer but I was running out of time. She killed the three suspects, because it made no difference to her. Then, came a coffin with the words "I LOVE YOU" written on it. It was cheap. For a lonely, practical, small woman. It was for you." Molly gasped and I turned to her again. "I had to make you say those same words in three minutes or your flat would explode. She had got there five persons killed that very day, who knows how many more in her life, I wasn't about to doubt that she had planted explosives in your flat. I couldn't imagine a world with you dead Molly, I couldn't allow it to happen. So I did what she told me. And then she said that she had tricked me into doing it. There was nothing, but my fear. If I hadn't been so scared I would have reasoned better and I would have known that she was lying to me. But I couldn't. I couldn't reason in that moment. I couldn’t reason with you about to die before my eyes. And I'm sorry I couldn’t do it and had to put you through it. I really am sorry about it. But there is something strange about saying something aloud. There's a difference when only you know something, when no one but you can say it. And when that something scares you, it's easier to deny it. But once said out loud, it’s real. It's tangible. It becomes true."

Silence appeared again. I didn't want to tell her the rest of the story, it was too overwhelming. I felt as if I had to. But I couldn't bring myself to open my mouth anymore. Her eyes bore into mine and she takes a step closer. So close I can feel her breath on my face.

"I–I... I believe you."

"You do?" She doesn't answer, instead she nods and looks into my eyes once again. She can see it for herself.

I could cry. Maybe I am crying. I don't know, I don't care. She believes me. She believes me! I don't remember giving my arms the order of pulling her closer, but that's what they do.

She's crying. But it's okay now. She is warm. She is so very warm. I lift her head from her jaw, as delicately as I am capable and slowly, very slowly, my lips fall onto hers. It starts like a chaste press of lips but when her arms rush to encircle my neck I find myself biting her bottom lip. It grows slowly, peacefully, gradually, until I cannot believe this storm of everything; her scent, her lips, her warmth, her hands pressing to the back my head, my leg between hers, her lack of the breath and the rush of hearts; started with something so chaste.

Finally our lips part. I'm trying to stead my breath, my arms tangled around her waist, holding her to me, to probe myself that she is here, her lost air wandering somewhere over my chest. I don't believe I have ever felt this at peace. As if everything is suddenly right in the world. A wave of electrolysing euphoria hits me with all its might. I notice that my head is buried on her neck and I rise it, as if she had been told to do so too she rises her head too and I'm lost in a sea of chocolated honey.

Whatever she was searching in my eyes, she must have found it for she goes back to her position, with her cheek against my chest and my arms all around her. I go back to mine too. I don't feel like moving, or talking. No words are needed now. I just want to stay like this for a while.

A long one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the end, I hope you have enjoyed this as much as I have and dunno leave some comments to feed my starved confidence as a writer :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hi, this is also in my fanfiction net but this is a corrected version that my ffnet account does not let me upload, I would thank you all if you would leave comment <3


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